Blog Post #4

When observing and criticizing media, one must take into account the principles of Marxism to truly analyze a form of media well. When analyzing media with the Marxist perspective, one recognizes what the media is trying to suggest to its audiences about the social and economic status about a particular group of people, whether it be by race, sexual orientation, or nationality.

In economic terms, Marxism is the idea that there are two sets of people, the elite class and the working class; the elite class owns the terms of production while the working class is just that, the people that provide the labor for the benefit of the elite class. Transitioning that idea into media, we can think of Marxism as having the elites, which own the media such as News Corp that owns Fox, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post among others, and the working class, which is the population of people that read, watch and/or listen to what the media is advocating.

False consciousness is one of the main characteristics of Marxism, where the idea of “whatever is, is right” causes a false sense of truth to the beliefs of a society. For example, in the 1950s when people in the United States shared the belief that African Americans and White Americans had to be separate because one group was supposedly better than the other that they had to be separated, from the fountains they drank from to the areas of the bus one could sit on. This shared belief was valued as the correct way of thinking because that was how it was, anything that challenged the idea of being separate was wrong. This ideology that applied to a majority of the people in the 1950s showcased the concept of hegemony, which categorizes a group of people, White Americans, dominant to other individuals, African Americans.

When looking at a TV show or an advertisement, we must see beyond the superficial significance of the ad. For example, we must set aside the fact that a Chanel advertisement is trying to sell their products while branding themselves as high luxury, and focus on the idea that Chanel may be unintentionally advertising the fact that only rich, successful, and famous people (the elite class) can afford the lifestyle that is correlated with Chanel. Although it is true that the people that usually purchase products like Chanel and Gucci are rich and successful, the idea that a particular group of people is better than the rest because they can afford expensive clothing and accessories should not be permitted to stand along our beliefs.

When analyzing media, we must notice what they are saying about society and about groups of individuals. Are they suggesting the idea that a particular group of people are superior to others, or that they are less than others? Who is teaching these beliefs and who is taking part in being an audience member to the media that is in our environment? Is this form of media in anyway becoming a method that “[maintains] the dominance of a ruling class?” (Berger 57) These are the questions we must ask ourselves when analyzing media while using the concepts of Marxism.